A Georgia community has united to help a homeless father after he was shamed on social media by a McDonald’s customer who posted a picture of him sleeping at the restaurant.
Simon Childs, 21, was recently on his night duty at a Fayette County McDonald, and he was resting in between shifts at the restaurant, during his break, according to WSB-TV. As Childs closed his eyes, a female customer took a picture of him and then posted it to a facebook group page.
“Just another reason for me to leave Fayetteville,” she wrote on the platform, according to the news station.
“I was in the McDonald’s in the middle of town and I saw this guy sleeping in the booth. I go and tell an employee that someone is asleep in their booth and her response was ‘oh yeah, we know hee hee, it’s ok’ and I said ‘not really but whatever.
’”
The woman didn’t know about Childs’s situation that he was homeless and struggling after the loss of a loved one.
“I’ve been going through a hard time with my mom passing,” he explained to WSB-TV.
Childs was facing a hard time but still, he was working at the restaurant to provide basic things to his baby son.
Childs said he got hurt after seeing That someone posted his picture without knowing the truth.
“Everything I do, I want to work for it,” he said. “It kind of hurt to see my picture up there, you know? I thought it was something negative and nobody would care about it.”
After WSB-TV covered the story, many people came to support him, and show him that his community is with him, despite what has been posted on social media.
When he came back to work after the story aired, he found diapers and other things for his baby.
“They changed my life in a couple of days,” he said.
Local chefs Xavier and Theo Thomas even offered Childs to borrow a car for job interviews. A Fayette County barber has given him a free haircut.
He said: ‘I thought it was something negative and nobody would care about it.’
“I didn’t think the community would even care enough to do that, but they care,” Childs told the station.
Childs doesn’t want to think about that woman who tried to shame him, and he is just focusing on positive things that came from the ordeal.
“I’m not homeless, not now,” he said, “Thanks to her.”